Ring Around Rosie (7 page)

“It’s the most likely scenario at the
moment. The police seemed to take it as a positive sign… that she’s… still
alive. Because they haven’t found a body.”

His voice broke off and Ted heard him blow
his nose.

“Dad?”

“It’s ok, son. We’ll find her. I know we
will. Just stay positive. I’ve got to go, speak soon.”

“Bye dad.”

“Your mum sends her love. Bye Ted.”

Ted shut his phone with a snap. Dillon was
standing opposite him expectantly.

Ted told him what his mum and dad had said.
Dillon sat down when Ted had finished; he looked older than Ted remembered.

“It’s funny, my mum just said the same
thing. I was hoping it was just her overactive imagination but maybe not.”

“What made her think it might be
traffickers though?” asked Ted.

“Well partly because she watches a lot of
TV, and partly because her cousin’s daughter was trafficked.”

Ted rested his head in his hands. One
minute he knows nothing about trafficking, and the next he knows someone who
knows someone who was trafficked, as well as possibly his own sister.

“It’s like when you buy something you’ve
never had before,” said Ted, looking up through blurred, red eyes, “like a
different phone or car; you suddenly realise how many others have the same as
you, but before you got yours you’d never noticed.”

“Eh?” Dillon looked puzzled.

“Well I never even noticed or paid any
attention to trafficking because it had never happened to me or anyone I knew,
but now that it has happened to someone I know, it seems like it’s everywhere!”

 “That’s so true!” piped up Plank. “I had
no idea about asthma until my sister had it and now I see people puffing on
their inhalers all the time. Funny how that works; like you’re blind to
everything until it enters your peripheral vision, despite the fact it’s there
all the time.”

“That’s deep, man,” said Midge nodding
solemnly.

 “Oh shut up you brainless, bald idiot!”
spat Plank.

“Now, now kids,” scolded Dillon.

“So what happened to your mum’s cousin’s
daughter then?” asked Ted, fighting the desire to tell Midge to be serious for
once.

As if on cue, Mrs M walked into the room.
She seemed sadder than when Ted had seen her earlier as she forced a smile
towards Plank and Midge. Ted rose and offered her his seat, which she
gratefully accepted.

“I’m sorry to hear about Rosie,” she began.
“It’s truly awful.”

“Thank you,” smiled Ted. “Dill said your
cousin experienced something similar with her daughter,” coaxed Ted, hungry for
any information.

Mrs M lowered her eyes and tugged at a
stray bit of cotton hanging from her shirt. She seemed unsure of what to say so
Ted waited patiently for her to speak. Finally she took a deep breath and
began.

“It was under very different circumstances
that my cousin Angelica’s daughter was trafficked. Where we’re from, in
Nigeria, they do things very differently, in ways that are hard for Westerners
to comprehend. Most Nigerians are very religious; their entire belief system
revolves around God and doing his bidding –
the Niger Delta, where we all lived, claims
to have more churches per square mile than any other place on Earth; we had
three within a mile of the house we grew up in.
Anyway, there are people, so-called religious leaders, who
take advantage of the strength of those beliefs and manipulate them to gain
power over others.”

Ted watched Mrs M as she stared into the
empty fireplace like she was watching a scene play out in front of her. It was
clearly an uncomfortable subject for her, as she seemed unable to meet anyone’s
eyes. Ted wondered if she was ashamed about what she was telling them.

“Another thing you need to understand about
Nigeria is that there is a lot of poverty, disease and hunger, but also a lot
of money. These two extremes exist side by side; the problem is that the rich
can dip their filthy fingers into the poor side, but the poor aren’t able to do
the same in return. Having all that wealth under their noses makes the poor
angry and jealous and they don’t understand why they can’t have some of the
money. They search for someone or something to blame; they can’t blame God
because he is their salvation, so instead they blame the Devil, or rather the
Devil’s children – any child from a family that is poor or diseased is said to
be the cause of the suffering and so is named a witch. And the religious
leaders I mentioned earlier use this as their manipulation. They are the ones
that encourage this absurd belief, because they can then offer a solution;
namely exorcism, which can cost families up to a year’s income. During the
exorcism, or deliverance, the children are shaken violently and have ‘potions’
poured into their eyes, all the while their parents watch and pray that it
works because if it doesn’t they know their children will be killed.
Many children are held in
churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they ‘confess’ to being a
witch.”

Mrs M took an audible breath
like she had wanted to get the story out as quickly as possible and had
forgotten to breathe. Ted nodded encouragingly; afraid she would find it all
too much and stop.

“The families who can’t afford to pay to
have their witch child cleansed have to face the possibility of the child being
banished from the community, or worse; burned, buried alive, sometimes poisoned
or drowned, even hacked to death with machetes.”

As Mrs M wiped the tears from her eyes, Ted
was now unsure he wanted to hear the rest. 

“The point of this gruesome story is that
there were men who would pay to take the child witches away, far away, to a
better life abroad. Which is what Angelica chose for her daughter who was
accused of being a witch. Angelica couldn’t afford to have her exorcised and
the community had already cut out her daughter’s tongue and poured acid over
her in an attempt to rid her of the Devil themselves. So her only choice was to
send her away.

“Angelica later found out that the men that
had taken her daughter were traffickers, but by then it was too late.”

Mrs M blew her nose loudly, shattering the
silence left in her story’s wake. A whole new world had opened up like a gaping
hole in front of Ted and he felt as if he was teetering on the edge of it,
unable to pull himself back from the brink of its fiery depths.

“How is this allowed to happen?” he
whispered, mostly to himself.

Mrs M looked at him through tear-filled
eyes.

“No one cares, it’s as simple as that. It’s
no one else’s problem.”

“Has Angelica ever tried to find her
daughter?” asked Plank.

“She has no means of doing that. I managed
to get out of the country thanks to Dillon’s father who was English and in
Nigeria working in the oil fields for a while, but Angelica married a poor man
and so had to stay there. I have tried looking for her daughter in London, just
in case she was brought here, but there are so many other countries she could
have been taken to,” said Mrs M sadly.

“How did you know where to look or who to
ask?” said Ted desperately.

“Well, that’s partly why I told you this
long story. A friend of mine has a daughter that works behind the bar in a
strip club in Soho. She told me there are girls coming and going all the time,
many of whom have stories to tell, and tell them freely after a few drinks and
drugs. I went there and asked some of them if they’d seen her, no one had but
they had come across lots of foreign girls that had been trafficked. It’s a
place worth trying anyway.”

Ted got up from where he was sitting on the
floor, a flicker of hope in his heart. It was a place to start at least, a door
into the other world.

“I’m ready to go now,” he said firmly, smiling
gratefully at Dillon’s mum. She nodded and wrote down the name and address of
the club.

Midge jumped up.

“We’ll come with you,” he said. “I’m
excellent at charming the ladies, I can get them to talk.”

Despite the anguish Ted was feeling he
couldn’t help cracking a smile.

“Lead the way then, double-o-seven!”

Rosie sat rocking back and forth, her knees
pulled up under her chin, her eyes staring unblinking at the blank wall. Except
that it wasn’t the blank wall she was seeing, it was Lo’s tiny face and
pleading eyes, his little outstretched arms begging her for help. She had known
him for such a short time and yet the guilt she felt for failing him was
opening up a new hole in her chest.

And the worst thing was she had no idea
where he had been taken or whether he was coming back. London was a terrifying
place even to someone who knew it as well as her, but to a little boy who
couldn’t even speak the language it must feel like a being stuck in the middle
of a bee hive; the constant hum, the pulsating life around him, with nothing to
relate to the life he’d known before.

Baduwa came and sat down beside her. Rosie
thought she could see a glimmer of sympathy in her pretty eyes, but maybe it
was pity in the worst sense. Baduwa stroked her hair gently.

“I could make your hair look pretty if you
like?” she offered. “You could borrow my hair clip for a while, it’ll make you
feel better.”

Rosie felt like slapping her, shaking her
out of this charade.

“Why would I want to look pretty?” Rosie
snarled.

“So that you’ll get picked next time,” said
Baduwa, cocking her head on one side like a confused puppy.

Rosie sprang to her feet in fury. “Why the
hell would I want to be picked? Those people aren’t kind like you think,
they’re monsters! They keep us locked in a tiny room, feed us pig slop, and
pluck us out one by one like battery hens going to the slaughter.”

Baduwa rose in anger, her hands balled
fists at her sides. “You don’t know that! He’s going to come for me soon and
you’ll be left wishing it was you.”

Baduwa stomped to the other side of the
room and curled up on one of the mattresses. Utibe stood in the middle looking
from her to Rosie as if uncertain who to comfort. She chose Baduwa.

Rosie felt bad. She knew she shouldn’t have
shouted at Baduwa like that, she should have just left her to her delusions. It
must be comforting to be so unaware.

Rosie was about to apologise when the door
opened and Zaydain walked in. Rosie shrank back against the wall, wishing it
would open up and swallow her. He flung some clothes in her direction and
ordered her to put them on. He then did the same to Utibe and Baduwa. He
dropped a bag into the middle of the room and told them to find a pair of shoes
that fitted them.

“I’m not putting these on! You can’t make
me!” said Rosie through gritted teeth.

Zaydain walked towards her, his eyes
piercing her soul, and grabbed her by the throat.

“You will put them on or I will hurt your
family, it’s as simple as that,” he said, spitting each word. His face was so
close Rosie could see the tiny hairs above his lips breaking the surface of his
skin. His breath smelt of cigarettes and evil. Rosie hardly breathed as he held
her against the wall, his body pressing against hers. Then he let her go and
she slumped onto the floor.

Rosie held her neck where his hand had
been, it felt so small beneath her own hand it must have felt like a twig to
him; easily snapped. She gulped back the vomit that had entered her mouth. Her
family: she hadn’t even thought they might get hurt.

Rosie looked up and saw Zaydain leaning
against the wall, his eyes roaming hungrily over the others as they tried to
keep themselves from his gaze. His eyes then flicked angrily in her direction
and she started putting on her clothes, staying seated on the floor in an
attempt to keep her body hidden too.

She wriggled into a small lace top with a
bra sewn inside it, then a short skirt with a split up the side. There was also
a brown wig cut in a bob with a straight fringe. It reminded her of the Barbie
doll girls at the school she used to go to. She brushed her hair under the wig;
pushing herself aside to make way for the other person they expected her to be.
She felt numb now. Robotic. She couldn’t fight anymore, or even entertain the
idea of escape. Not if it meant her family might get hurt. She’d caused them
enough pain.

Rosie stood, pulling sheepishly at the
skirt in an attempt to make it longer. It didn’t seem to want to oblige so she
gave up and just shivered. Zaydain stared at her, his eyes distant blue pools
of desire, and then, as if coming out of a trance, he blinked and reached into
a bag full of coats.

“Put these on, we don’t want you to catch a
chill now do we?” he sneered. “And brighten up your miserable mouths with
this,” he said, tossing them each a lipstick.

Rosie’s was called Orange Sunset and it
smelt of her old history teacher.

Griff suddenly appeared in the doorway and
they each slipped on a pair of shoes and were marched out into the cool night.

Rosie’s shoes pinched her feet as she
tottered along at the back. She noticed Baduwa stumbling ahead of her,
desperately trying to master a confident, sexy walk, but her drooping shoulders
and frightened, darting eyes gave her away, and Rosie realised that Baduwa was
beginning to lose her beautiful plumage.

As they were bundled into the car, Zaydain
cursed under his breath and ran back towards the building they had just left.
Griff sat in the front seat shifting nervously. Rosie was alarmed to find she
pitied him; he was like a child in every way except for his size, and she
wondered whether he felt just as trapped and helpless as the rest of them.

She looked up and caught his dark eyes
watching her in the mirror; there was an unnerving yearning in them that made
Rosie gasp and look away. Baduwa shot her a look but Rosie just shook her head.

“Put these on,” said Zaydain, getting back
into the car and passing each of them a small drawstring bag.

Rosie opened hers tentatively, expecting a
large spider to crawl out and bite her hand, but instead found a small key on a
chain. She looked across at the others and saw that they had the same. They
weren’t plain door- or car-style keys; they were more ornate than that, like
keys to a treasure chest. Rosie turned hers over in her hand wondering where it
might let her in to, or, better still, out of.

“Put it on,” Zaydain ordered again.

“What’s it for?” asked Rosie.

“Access all areas,” Zaydain laughed.

Rosie did as she was told and then sat back
to gaze out of the window at the streaking lights, her flickering eyes desperately
searching the passing shops and houses for a spark of recognition, a clue that
she’d been there before. For ages there was nothing familiar and she began to
fear that she’d somehow got it wrong and they weren’t in London at all, but
soon the buildings got denser and higher and Rosie suddenly saw a department
store she’d visited many times with her mum. Her heart lurched at the memory
and tears rushed to her eyes. It was like seeing an old friend, and she felt
homesick for her childhood and the relationship she used to have with her mum,
before everything.

They turned down Regent Street, past more
shops ornately decorated to tantalise the discerning shopper, then onto
Piccadilly Circus with its unmistakeable light show. Despite how late it must
have been, the city was still very much alive and pulsating with activity.

Rosie looked at Baduwa and Utibe, their
transfixed faces illuminated by neon, and realised they would never have seen
anything like this before. This place that Rosie had called home for so long
was a wonderland full of possibilities to them. But Rosie now realised it was
all just a mirage, a façade designed to fool anyone stupid enough to be
hypnotised by the bright lights, and it would take more than glitter and
sparkles to convince her otherwise.

The car swung round the Circus and into
Shaftesbury Avenue, the gateway to Soho. Of course, thought Rosie, that was
where they were headed. The neon lights reduced in size and the streets
narrowed as they wound through them.

The car then pulled to a stop outside what
looked like a nightclub. The imposing black sign read ‘The Lock’, and Rosie
shuddered. She felt Baduwa’s reaction next to her and reached across the dark
car to grab her hand and squeeze it. Baduwa looked at her and managed a weak
smile. Rosie suddenly felt so sorry for her. Her expectations were crumbling
with each minute and it was evident in her terrified eyes.

The three of them stood shivering on the
pavement as Zaydain spoke to the man on the door, then they were pushed inside.
The sound of thumping music echoed from somewhere beneath them as they had
their coats removed. Rosie began to feel like a doll, a puppet, whose own
actions were not required as she was pushed and pulled and directed all the way
down to the depths of the club.

It was a large, cavernous space with
balconies spiralling down over three floors and one vast dance floor at the
centre. Lights flashed and streaked across the club, highlighting the happy
faces of the hundreds of dancers pulsating in one huge mass, like a swarm of
bees in a hive. As Rosie looked closer she saw that along the balconies were
little pockets of seats from where the dance floor could be viewed, and each
pocket was filled with men and women staring intently below.

The girls were steered round the back of
the balconies and along a corridor to where a large ornate curtain hung,
guarded by two men. They nodded at Zaydain as he handed them a card and pointed
to the keys around the girls’ necks. The men stood aside to let them walk behind
the curtain and through a door. Rosie almost felt like laughing; this seemed
like a joke, a bad scene from a Hollywood film. Surely things like this didn’t
really
go on?

Suddenly Rosie had the amusement knocked
out of her as someone collided with her and then ricocheted off the door frame
in her desperation to get out. Rosie watched in surprise as the girl picked
herself up and ran out through the door, tears streaming down her face. Rosie
clutched her winded stomach as she tried to catch her breath. A few seconds
later the girl was dragged back into the room by one of the men who’d been on
the door. She was sobbing loudly. Her eyes caught Rosie’s pleadingly, for what
Rosie was unsure, but she guessed she was about to find out. The girl was
dragged back to a table and slammed down into a seat. Her long hair hid her
face as she cried. Rosie felt Baduwa shiver beside her.

 This room was far removed from where they
had just been. It was small and intimate, with tables nestled in booths
surrounding a much smaller dance floor where there were young boys and girls
dancing together. Some looked awkward but some seemed to be really enjoying the
attention from the people sitting at the tables, their hungry eyes focussed on
the dancers.

“Time to earn your keep,” Zaydain hissed in
Rosie’s ear. “Dance!”

Rosie looked at him in horror, but seeing
the warning in his eyes she slowly started moving her body to the music. Baduwa
and Utibe did the same, never taking their startled eyes off their
surroundings. Rosie saw that there were a few small podiums dotted around the
dance floor and on each one was a huddle of girls dancing together, some shyly
and some with gusto. As she looked closer she noticed, to her horror, that they
were all wearing the same keys that she and Baduwa and Utibe were wearing. What
did it all mean?

“Look sexy!” growled Zaydain.

Rosie had never tried to look sexy in her
life and had no idea how, so she started moving her arms more vigorously and
nodding her head. Baduwa knew how, though, and Rosie watched as she curled and
spun around, stroking her body as she moved. She even began to look like she
was enjoying herself as a small smile played on her lips. This was what she
loved, after all, thought Rosie, to be the centre of attention and be admired
like a beautiful bird. Maybe this was where Baduwa belonged; perhaps this was a
million times better than the life she had left in Nigeria. Rosie tried to copy
some of her moves, anything to stop Zaydain scowling at her.

Once he seemed satisfied that they were doing
the best they could, Zaydain led them to a podium and helped each of them climb
up.  Rosie suddenly felt more self-conscious and tried to hide between Baduwa
and Utibe, which, surprisingly, neither of them seemed to mind. Even Utibe was
getting into the music. Rosie wished she could find enjoyment in their
situation; it would make things so much easier, somehow. She wouldn’t have a
lead-weight in her stomach pulling her down and down, buckling her legs as they
resisted the strain.

She suddenly noticed that the lights were
doing something to the keys around Baduwa and Utibe’s neck; they were revealing
a number that was written on them in some strange pen. She looked down at her
own and the same was happening; the number on her key was 133. Rosie looked
around them, trying to find answers in the crowd. As she did she noticed there
were a lot of eyes on them, or rather on her. A red laser shone in her eyes and
then onto her chest. She followed the beam back to a man sitting in one of the
booths and saw him nod towards another man.  Before she knew it, she was being
dragged down from the podium and ushered over to the table. She glanced back at
the terrified faces of Baduwa and Utibe as she was taken and placed in front of
the man who had shone the light on her.